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This post contains Lab 6 of the 5 labs created for our current set of US DX IT Camps. Yeah.. this is one I just added for good measure. The complete set of labs are listed here: Lab 1 – Building the Foundation (Virtual Network, Storage, and Cloud Service) Lab 2 – Building Workloads (Creating your DC...

The following article is part 4 of our many-part series, “ Hybrid Cloud for IT Pros ”. Click HERE often for the ever-growing full list of articles in this series. At my IT Camp events, when discussing this topic, I’ll often ask my IT Pro friends in attendance the following questions; usually with the...

Azure Backup “is a simple and reliable data protection solution which enables customers to back up their on-premises data to Microsoft Azure.” Remember Windows Server Backup? Well, like that perennial utility, this one backs up from or restores items to your Windows File System. “But this one backs up...

The following article is part 3 of our many-part series, “ Hybrid Cloud for IT Pros ”. Click HERE often for the ever-growing full list of articles in this series.
“Hey Kevin, I’d like to take advantage of putting application servers up in a virtual network in Azure. But...

On December 8, 2014 my friend Simon May and I recorded (while presenting live) a Microsoft Virtual Academy “Jumpstart” session all about how to manage iOS and Android devices with Microsoft solutions. We divided the topic up into 4 modules, to introduce the topic and the fundamentals, as well as to cover...

In this episode I am honored to welcome back Microsoft Vice President Brad Anderson to the show. We discuss his monthly upcoming live webcast series, “ Success with Enterprise Mobility ” , that kicks off on Tuesday, December 9th and concludes on March 3rd . Tune in as he gives us a preview of what he...

It isn’t a brand-new tool, but it was updated to version 1.1 the other day, and definitely worth sharing. The Microsoft Azure (IaaS) Cost Estimator Tool is now available. It’s an installable tool that allows you to “profile [your] existing on-premises infrastructure and estimate cost of running it on...

Welcome to another in our series entitled “Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud”. As you may be aware, this week the theme is “ Management and Automation ”. As a part of that theme I’m sharing with you an introduction to Desired State Configuration (DSC); more...

This is pretty cool. As the title says: System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager is now an application that Microsoft will support when running inside a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure . I’m sure they won’t mind me sharing this.. but here is the text from an e-mail I received on the subject that...

Yesterday in our “ Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud ” series, Matt Hester described how to create a virtual network “in the cloud” in Microsoft Azure in order to support cloud-based Virtual Machines and their ability to communicate with each other and with the outside world. We of course...

Keith Mayer and I continue our series on “ Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud ”. In today’s episode we discuss various options for networking. Tune in as we go in depth on what options are available for hybrid cloud networking as we explore network connectivity and address concerns about...

My friend Dan Stolts and yours truly continue our series on “ Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud ” with an overview on how to plan for a hybrid cloud storage solution using Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure . Tune in for our lively discussion on the many storage options...

The team of US DX IT Pro Technology Evangelists is doing another series of articles and TechNet Radio interviews. The topic: Modernizing your Infrastructure. The goal: To give you as many resources as you’ll need to get your infrastructure up to speed, whether you’re simply looking for ways to migrate...

Thanks to Mary Jo Foley for tweeting about this. Mary Hutson is maintaining a very useful list of “top Microsoft Support solutions for the most common issues IT Pros experience when using or deploying Windows 8 or 8.1.” She updates the list every quarter; the most recent being just two days ago (Aug...

Whether or not you choose to believe me, here are a two things that I know to be true: Microsoft takes your privacy and preferences very seriously, and Microsoft wants you to stay “in-the-loop” about what’s coming. Often our marketing and operations people send out notices about up-coming events, such...

Are you a VMware Pro? In an increasingly multi-hypervisor world, more and more IT organizations are using Microsoft Hyper-V and Microsoft Azure to achieve superior performance and workload flexibility at the best possible price. With nearly two-thirds of businesses on more than one virtualization platform...

Well.. Now that you’ve had a chance to take in all the great news ( //Build ) and new updates from Microsoft over the past couple of weeks, we thought it was finally time to wrap up our series for IT Pros entitled “ Windows 8.1 for Business ”. For this final article of the series, I’m going to leave...

Logically, it makes sense. Forever it seems whenever any software company comes out with a new version of their product, the added features and functionality require extra hardware. In the case of operating systems, that seems especially true. Software vendors are always trying to build their solutions...

Even if you’ve never tried Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 , you may have seen the advertisements showing off the lovely colorful “touch-first” interface (previously known as the “Metro” UI). Even some people using a traditional old non-touch laptop will reach out and touch the screen when they first encounter...

Well, you can. In fact, my friend and coworker Jennelle Crothers explains it all for you in today’s article in our “ Windows 8.1 for Business ” blog series. She writes… “Ask anyone who uses a computer for every day work tasks, they might say that they LIVE on the desktop and can’t be bothered with the...

One of the reasons some people weren’t comfortable with Windows 8 from the beginning was for the lack of their familiar start menu. In today’s article in our “ Windows 8.1 for Business ” series, my friend Matt Hester delivers the run-down on the benefits of the Start Screen vs. the old Start Menu, and...

Welcome to March! And not that I mean to alarm you, but welcome to the final month before support ends on Windows XP . I know that many of you supporting IT and devices for your businesses have known this for a while, and are either already done or continuing to work on migrating to Windows 7 or Windows...

Over the past several weeks, my teammates have all contributed to a very valuable series of blog articles entitled “ Disaster Recovery Planning for IT Pros ”. They’ve covered topics such as how to get started in planning, and Server Virtualization and how it applies to Disaster Recovery, and testing...

IT Professionals: Have you ever been deep in the guts of a gnarly infrastructure deployment, automation, configuration, trouble-shooting or similar task, and thought to yourself something like this: “Why didn’t that darn product team at Microsoft make this tool work better, more like what I need it to...

At our IT Camp in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, Kris asked me a valid question. “How does a Hyper-V Server (not the full windows install) do clustering if you can’t install the cluster role?” Kris’s question is a good one, because we had just been discussing how limited Hyper-v Server is in terms of what...